Aptean

Ultra Insight

Aptean is particularly strong in food and beverage, distribution (Apprise), and discrete manufacturing (Made2Manage and WorkWise). Aptean aggressively expanded its portfolio with several recent acquisitions. The company has emerged as a leader in the food & beverage industry, with several acquisitions of solutions built on the Microsoft platform.

Aptean has begun adding a reseller channel. Given the volume of customers, new and old, a robust partner ecosystem will be a nice addition.

Aptean leadership clearly is working hard to define its strategy around recent acquisitions, and customers and prospects alike should be excited to see what Aptean brings to market in the coming years.

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From Distribution ERP Vendor Update (2021)  DOWNLOAD

Aptean Distribution ERP is one of several Aptean solutions that are purpose-built for specific industries. Roughly 55% of the company’s revenues are generated in North America, 44% from Europe and the remaining 1% from the rest of the world. Each solution is supported by experts who come out of industry.

The company differentiates itself from other software vendors by their relentless focus on delivering mission-critical, industry-specific software. While each Aptean solution is a different core ERP solution, there are a series of advanced modules that are available for integration to any of the ERP solutions. These modules include Warehouse Management, Transportation Management, ePayments and eCommerce, Sales & Customer Management, Electronic Data Interface (EDI), Manufacturing Execution, Enterprise Asset Management, Product Lifecycle Management.

Aptean Distribution ERP customers typically are mid-market consumer goods importers and distributors with revenues ranging from $10 million to $300 million and/or 10 to 250 concurrent users. Its target market includes customers that have design teams – not manufacturers per se but companies that source product from Asia (long lead times). Generally, they are not fast-moving consumer product goods distributors, (i.e., home goods) and include value-added services such as light assembly and light kitting.

Aptean Distribution ERP has over 400 customers based in the United States, United Kingdom and EMEA. Two-thirds of their customers are implemented on the cloud solution. While available both as on-premises and SaaS, single-tenant solutions, over the last three to four years the SaaS has been the primary option.

Key differentiators include embedded EDI, chargeback management, profitability scorecards and long lead time forecasting. The profitability scorecards are a module around profitability that includes calculating royalties, chargebacks, allowances, commissions, EDI and special handling. Aptean also strives to provide a complete solution for distribution customers such that they don’t need to utilize third-party solutions.

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From Food & Beverage ERP Vendor Update (2020)  DOWNLOAD

Aptean aggressively expanded its portfolio of F&B solutions with several strong acquisitions in 2019. It will be interesting to see how its strategy matures as it rolls these into one product. These food-specific solutions have solid technology behind them—all are built on the Microsoft cloud platform.

It’s good to see that Aptean has reached the point of adding resellers to the mix. Given the volume of customers, new and old, a robust partner ecosystem will be a nice addition.

Aptean leadership clearly is working hard to define its strategy around recent acquisitions, and customers and prospects alike should be excited to see what Aptean brings to market in the coming years.